Couple of coats of Ivory Toplac on the floor, dusted with non stick additive and the cockpit / decks are finished
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Wow, it worked !! I tried making a 300mm length of floor stringer, used a layup of 3 layers of carbon, held down with clingfilm and a flat ceramic tile. A bit of persuation to get it out of the mould and some trimming and there it is ..well chuffed. The layers are not too well consolodated but should work ok Did a bit more work on the gantry too. I bonded some lengths of tape up inside the tubes then layered these with more cloth onto the taped decks. Covered them in peel ply and plastic to hold in place. Bit messy, but should trim up ok
Tonight I had a go at building a mold for cockpit floor stringers. I cut a section of PVC corrugated roofing, then nailed and taped it between two fixed bearers. I think I'll trial mold a short length to see if it works and get an idea of how many layers of carbon / glass to use.
Masked off the floor and applied another coat of epoxy around the edges for a bit of clearcoat bling
I'm getting fed up of being in such a cold shed. It's been nearly three weeks of frozen tools, epoxy like treacle and long drying times. I've made very little progress, and there's no way I'm going to be able to begin finishing work in these conditions - so we've decamped to the kitchen - thx Sarah! It's even tighter here than the shed, couldn't cope with a boat another couple of inches longer, but it's so much warmer :)
Cockpit floor foam filled, sanded and ready to sheath, but I'll wait for the hull to stabilise at a warmer temp first At last, I've got the cockpit floor laid down. After lots of advice (thanks guy's) I laid the foam sheets out on the kitchen floor. Laminated the two thin (5mm) sheets together with a thick bog, filled the underside before sheathing it in glass cloth, using peel ply to consolidate the epoxy into the weave. This produced a much better stiffer panel than my last attempt (sorry no photo's) It's not as light as I'd hoped, weighing 4.5kg before sheathing the top, but then a sheet of 5mm ply would be around 8kg and would still require stiffening.
I glued it down yesterday, fit some ply inserts to carry fittings etc and filletted the edge today
Really unsure what to do now. I've invested a lot of money and time into these materials to achieve a light boat but I clearly chose foam that was too thin and am no longer confident I can make it work with hand layup. I wish I'd stuck with traditional ply construction, but I've no more materials left now. I guess I'll have to order another sheet of ply and start again.
I'm scratching around the last of my materials now and ended up having to scarf the last couple of pieces of ply together for the port side tank as none of the leftovers were quite big enough. I'm not too worried as I plan to paint these panels.
I also fitted a couple of doublers between frames 3 and 4 to provide hard points for cleats |
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